Couple of Crumbs

Summer Lovin’: finding the silver living in a variety of unusual places

Hey everyone!  You can usually find me blogging from MK in Wonderland, but I had to take up Couple of Crumbs when they offered me a spot as a guest blogger.  I blog about everything – from money troubles, life as a twenty-something girl, online dating, to the adventures of being a new Mom.  Since most of my recent posts have been consumed by the new addition to my life, I wanted to return to my “roots” and write about things I know well: moving, red wine, and finding at least one good thing about the most miserable of situations.  Enjoy!

Moving sucks.  There’s no way around it.  And I can say that because I’ve moved 10 times since I graduated from college 5 years ago (5 years…shudder).  Don’t believe me?  In order:  moved from my apartment in Burlington, NC back to my parents’ house in Lawrenceville, NJ then to an old, furnished one bedroom in Roland Park while my actual apartment was at the end of the previous lease.  Moved into a shoebox sized one-bedroom apartment in Mount Vernon (Baltimore), then to my favorite rowhouse in the entire world on Streeper Street, then to one of my best friends’ parents’ house (last minute emergency/necessity), on to another apartment in Hanover with two of my girlfriends, then to yet another one-bedroom in Arlington, VA, back to Baltimore in another rowhouse (after sleeping on a few friends’ couches in between the move), and then here I am, right outside of Baltimore for over a year now, which – as you can see – is some sort of record for me. 

 There is one, teensy upside to moving and it takes a lot for me to admit that there is ANYTHING positive about moving as I have endured packing and unpacking as a second full-time job.  Moving forces you to get reorganized, throw out the stuff you’ve been hanging on to for no reason, and just get your life back in order.  I think it started in Virginia – my odd stash of mail and bills.  I’m not a big pile person, in fact, piles drive me insane.  So, I take what I think at the time is the “higher road” and do not put my mail in piles, but instead, shove it in my underwear drawer.

Yep. 

And every house that I’ve lived in since I’ve lived in Virginia, I vow that I won’t start stuffing things into my underwear drawer and that, instead, I’ll form some sort of organized method like a normal person…but I never do.  In fact, my underwear drawer is currently full of bills (as in…I owe money…not bills as in dollar dollar bills ya’ll ßnothing has sounded more unnatural than that statement coming from my mouth) and my sock drawer, for whatever reason, is full of office supplies.  And it’s not like I take out the socks and replace them with office supplies…no, the socks and office supplies live together in the top drawer furthest to the left.  In all fairness, I don’t carry one stash of bills from one house to the next.  I take the opportunity to reorganize myself and purge whatever I need to/everything.

The storm this past weekend had a similar effect.  Our basement flooded.  To give you an idea of how the evening went, I had taken a three -hour nap earlier that day so when the electricity went out at NINE PM…there was no way I would be able to just fall asleep.  So I did what any person (just me) would do…popped in a few melatonin and threw back a couple glasses of wine….the mellie cocktail, as I so affectionately call it.  And then the basement flooded and I had to coherently fill up buckets of water and come up with some sort of logical game plan all whilst feeling a bit…wobbly…if you will.  (Word to the wise…consider assessing your situation during a natural disaster BEFORE going into party mode.)  The end result, aside from my miserable headache the next day, was that the basement carpet had to be ripped up and replaced…which has led into full blown overhaul of the entire downstairs level.  B figured that since everything was already getting ripped up, we might as well replace the heinous tile by the back door and repaint over the god awful color selection on the walls (none of which were my choosing).  The end result?  Everything that he had wanted to do was getting done.  Under the best of circumstances?  No.  But chances are, without a little water in the basement, it wouldn’t have gotten done anytime soon. 

So the bottom line is that two things that are in no way fun – moving and flooding – have at least ONE positive outcome.  A fresh start.  Even if it just means having a meticulously organized sock drawer for one week…it’s still an improvement.  So when you’re packing up your life belongings for the 11^th time or filling up pitchers with clay water after red wine time…try to remind yourself it’s a blessing in disguise.  A little one.  But hey, two natural disasters in two weeks…I’ll take whatever blessings I can get at this point.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I have a Visa bill to pay and I believe I’ve misplaced it…and by that I mean…it’s probably in my t-shirt drawer…with all the old sorority t-shirts I swore I was going to throw out last time I moved.  

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Finding the silver lining in a variety of unusual places is part of our Summer Series.

Summer Lovin’: One Girl. Four Countries. Twenty-Five Days. (Part 5)

”Fight the future” is a shy cupcake who lives in her own little world. A pop culture geek, lover of languages and different cultures, and professional daydreamer, her mind usually takes her to mind-blowing places. She is fearless. If she sets her heart on something, she knows she will get it… or that’s what she likes to believe. 

< Part 4 < Part 3 < Part 2 < Part 1

I always get depressed after a trip ends but, when I got on the plane, something had changed in me. I was satisfied with what I had accomplished and so proud of myself. All my hard work had paid off. Planning this trip took time and patience. It gave me lots of headaches and panic attacks. I wanted to quit many times, but the support of my family and friends got me through all of that. I went to Europe, danced along with great music, saw the sights and indulged in more treats than ever before. Most importantly, I did it on my own.

“Happiness is only real when shared”. Those words were stuck in my head after watching Sean Penn’s Into The Wild and they came back to haunt me several times during my trip. Whenever I had the chance, I would write an e-mail to my sister, my friends or my parents, depending on the nature of the comments I needed to get off my chest. Primarily, I wanted to let them know I was okay but also, I was afraid I would forget the details that make an anecdote fun to tell and I needed them to be my personal hard disk backup.

I’ll be completely honest: I would choose to endure all the pointless fights people get into when they have been traveling together for weeks — even starting to get tired of each other — without any complaints if that meant having someone with whom I can share a look or a laugh.

At London’s airport, I bought David Nicholls’ novel “One Day” and I was reading the first pages when I realized that the main characters were in their 20s waiting for their lives to begin. It felt like a cosmically designed coincidence.

So, whatever it is that I may desire for my future, I’m confident that I will at least try my best to get it, because it is those experiences that I will look back on one day and say ‘these are what make life worthwhile’.  Yes, I had to go to another continent to truly appreciate where I live (a place I know I’ll always return to), but that doesn’t mean I can’t be adventurous! Still, no matter what those other places have to offer: there’s really no place like home.

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One Girl. Four Countries. Twenty-Five Days. is part of our Summer Series.

Summer Lovin’: One Girl. Four Countries. Twenty-Five Days. (Part 4)

”Fight the future” is a shy cupcake who lives in her own little world. A pop culture geek, lover of languages and different cultures, and professional daydreamer, her mind usually takes her to mind-blowing places. She is fearless. If she sets her heart on something, she knows she will get it… or that’s what she likes to believe.

< Part 3 < Part 2 < Part 1

I wanted to get a ticket for Billy Elliot the Musical. Usually I don’t like musicals, but this was based on a film I adore and it received really good reviews. It was the right choice. I was blown away with the quality of the play and the richness of the characters; the talented cast performed as if it were the last show of their lives. Little did I know that one month later I would find myself comparing the miners’ strike and the clashes with the police portrayed in the play - which occurred in 1984 – with the images of the riots sweeping the country. Our world has changed so radically!

On the only sunny summer day in London, I went to Hampton Court Palace. If you’ve seen Showtime’s The Tudors you may recognise Henry VIII’s residence from the show. I took the train, crossed the bridge and went to the ticket booth. I walked into the palace and was greeted by a group of actors who, every two or three hours, would be playing out a scene in the courtyard or halls as if they were the characters who lived there in its glory days.

After spending the next day at the British Museum and at the Imperial War Museum, I desperately needed to relax.  I wandered through the streets of Piccadilly’s Circus, Trafalgar Square and Leicester Square, and I already felt at home. Maybe it was because I learned so much about that particular city in my English classes when we covered British culture. I was assigned books set in those very streets and I studied European history later too.  I had never stayed long in such a diverse society, so I felt I could mind my own business and be left alone. Nobody knew who I was, where I came from, and they didn’t care. I felt I knew where I was going, as if I was walking with a purpose and not like any other tourist.

I was in London and I was free.

On my last day history came alive in a different way during my stop at the Tower of London.  I was under my umbrella, looking around in the pouring rain, as I entered the first tower and I was completely overwhelmed by what was in front of me. I could picture the prisoners held there waiting to die, turning to a higher power, searching for hope or salvation within those walls.  Their carvings in the stones, 500-year-old graffiti, are still legible as a testament of the horrors they endured.

Around five in the afternoon the gates were closing so I went to the other side of London, across the Thames. Once I crossed the London Bridge I got to see a different side of the city and my imagination traveled back in time.  I saw it as a place where artists, prostitutes and alcoholics used to be  accepted.  A place where the dark tunnels and alleys reminded me of something I might have read in crime stories.  (Not all that scary in the daylight, but quite mysterious indeed!)

Later, I arrived at the Globe Theatre — I couldn’t leave without setting foot in that place! I loved listening to behind-the-scene stories of how productions happen today and how it was back then, in Elizabethan times. Then, I crossed the Millenium Bridge (a scene from Harry Potter came to mind!) and there, without even trying, I had found the most perfect view of London — St. Paul’s Cathedral.

My trip was now complete. I had gone to all the museums; I had been to all the landmarks and I had managed to make time to sit back and enjoy what was happening around me. It was time to say good-bye, pack my bags and return home.

… tune in tomorrow for Fight the future’s final reflections.

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One Girl. Four Countries. Twenty-Five Days. is part of our Summer Series.

Summer Lovin’: Little Ghost Girl

Eatinist Bitch hails from Queens, NY and loves food almost as much as she likes to talk. She’s been blogging since Summer 2010, and is currently interning for Robicelli’s Cupcakes in Brooklyn, NY. Check out her blog and like her on Facebook to get recipes, reviews, and other tasty nibbles.

“Can Geico save you 15% or more on your car insurance? Does a 10lb bag of flour make a really big biscuit?”

A mother walks in on her son, standing on a chair in front of the kitchen table. He has a look of utmost calm upon his face as he carefully butters the top of an enormous biscuit. Flour and baking materials lay askew, and a fine cloud of the powdery stuff hangs over all. She stands speechless for a beat, and goes right back out of the kitchen shaking her head and leaving him to his handiwork.

To my friend, Tana, that entire commercial is how she imagines me as a kid: a food obsessed child with permanent flour streaks on her face (also, a biscuit enthusiast). I don’t think she realized how close to home the commercial hit until I told her this story.

On a rainy Saturday, my 5 or 7 year old self took to wandering around the house, because that’s what I did when I was bored. My afternoon cartoons were in reruns, and you could only read the same books so many times. So, why not go exploring? My house isn’t that big, but at the time I thought it was a castle of warm wood and cozy spaces. Even if I couldn’t find somewhere new to play, I could at least find a nice place to nap. Eventually my wanderings led me to our kitchen, one of my favorite places in the world.

I was greeted by the lazy whoosh of the ceiling fan as soon as I walked in. I stood in the middle of the kitchen to assess my situation. Did I want something to eat? Did I want to go to the big bookshelf filled with cookbooks and pull something down to read? I wasn’t hungry for food, or reading or anything like that…I wanted to play. That’s when I turned around and saw it.

My mom had 3 ceramic canisters that she used to keep dry provisions in. One marked “Rice”, and another was marked “Sugar”. The third, well, it was unmarked and looked very different from the first two. Those were on the tall side with square edges and domed lids with grips on the inside of them.  The third container was a circle all around with a shiny white cover that looked like a tam o’shanter cap. And, its belly was always filled to the brim with white, unbleached flour.

 (source)

I pulled a chair over from the kitchen table and climbed on top of it so I would be level with the counter. I positioned the canister in front of me using both hands, because I knew it’d be less likely to fall that way. I pulled off the lid slowly, and a little puff of flour rose into the air. It tickled my nose and made me giggle, and the sound echoed in the silence of the room.

On the side of the flour jar, there was a little ceramic loop that held a little wooden dipper. It was carved smooth and light, and looked like a tiny ice cream scoop. I saw mounds of soft vanilla ice cream in this pile of flour, and I thought it should be scooped as such. I began to scoop the flour, lifting the little trough high in the air, and then turning it over so that the flour would fall out with a soft plop.

The kitchen soon began to smell nutty, as I was sending quite a considerable amount of flour into the air. I had long since abandoned the scoop, and instead, plunged my hands deep into the cool powdery mass, letting it slowly sift through my fingers. My mother didn’t really bake very much (she used the flour primarily to make dumplings, which I despised for their doughy heaviness), but I knew from the cooking shows that I adored and the Jewish bakery that we got our Challah and cookies from, that flour was usually the start of something good. In flour’s pale blank state lay the promise of cookies, pie crusts, cakes, and big fluffy biscuits to drag through rich brown gravy. And aside from all that, playing in the flour was just plain fun.

Now, my back was to the kitchen door, so I hadn’t noticed that my mother had been watching me powder myself and the kitchen counter like a doughnut for the past 10 minutes. There’s always a change in the air around you when you’re about to get in trouble, though. Almost as if the air’s ions are scrambling to find a hiding place because they are scared of your 5’11, Jamaican mother.

Somehow, I came to the realization that something was amiss, and stopped.

I slowly turned myself around on the chair and looked up right into to her big, brown eyes. What a sight I must have been! Face, hands and arms completely covered in flour, and sprinkles of it dusting my plaited pigtails that stuck out like sausages from the side of my head. I was a complete mess. I saw my mom’s hand reach out for me, and I wasn’t too sure I wanted to see what would come after that. I jumped off the chair with a yelp and ran away, twisting around her long legs, and hoping with all of my might that I would disappear, like the little girl ghost that I had become.

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Little Ghost Girl is part of our Summer Series.

Summer Lovin’: Southern Comfort

Waves of Grain is a guest “cupcake” who is trying her luck at travel writing, while exploring her new summer digs in the Sunshine State. She is a self-proclaimed science nerd who is working on a PhD in marine science, while simultaneously trying to figure out clever ways to travel the world for free and enjoy delicious beers along the way.

When I found out that I would be spending the summer in Florida for ‘work’ the first thing that popped into my head was, “ROAD TRIP!!!” Visions of bayous with cypress trees, Spanish moss hanging delicately off tree branches, and sweet iced tea danced through my head. Fueled mostly by my lack of southern exposure and watching True Blood one too many times, I pictured the South to have that Old World sort of charm that is lacking in much of the Northeast (not that we don’t have our own charms, its just more of an in-your-face, ‘Hey! I’m walkin’ here,’ sort of charm). I have been told that I overly romanticize things, which explains why I thought that a road trip from New York via I-95 was going to be like leaving Sex and the City and walking onto the set of Gone with the Wind, complete with ladies holding fancy parasols, fried green tomatoes and cute southern accents at every corner. Although it wasn’t quite that dramatic, I also wasn’t entirely wrong.

Looking up at a tree covered in Spanish moss.

As soon as I crossed the Mason-Dixon line, heading south on I-95, there was a noticeable difference in the general attitude and friendliness. As I left D.C. behind and headed into Virginia, and then North and South Carolina, the drivers became more polite and less aggressive, the gas station attendants more attentive, and even the roadside restaurant waitresses didn’t seem as annoyed by the mere presence of customers.

The cynic in me said it was all an act, but the romantic in me hoped that this was how all southern people were — accommodating, sweet, and earnestly good, even if they did do things a little slower than the pace I have become accustomed to. I was so impressed with the general southern hospitality that I would’ve stayed right where I was along the I-95 corridor, but I knew that things would just get better the further south I drove, and I couldn’t wait to get to Georgia. I decided that stopping in Savannah, GA was a priority, because I had heard from a few reliable sources that if wrought-iron laced balconies, and sweet southern comfort were on my must-see list, Savannah was the place to go.

And disappointed I was not.

Savannah is a gem that defines my ideal southern experience; as a quaint city-town nestled on the edge of a river, Savannah holds onto its colonial history (it was founded in 1733) while still maintaining an air of modernity and youthfulness.

View of Savannah from my hotel room, downtown historical buildings and modern bridge.

It didn’t take me long to decide that staying one night just wouldn’t do, so I extended my trip and remained in Savannah for 2 days soaking up the history, the sun and the inevitable cuteness. After some helpful advice from a bartender at Churchill’s, a British-owned restaurant/pub that served the most delicious black bean burger I’ve ever had, I decided that the next day’s itinerary would have to include wandering along the Riverwalk, checking out Forsythe Park (Savannah’s version of Central Park), and City Market — a pedestrian-only section that has sidewalk restaurants, trendy little shops, antique stores, pretty much anything you could possibly want all wrapped up neatly in a 3-block radius.

Old wagon cart full of flowers in the middle of City Market.

Along the Riverwalk, the shops and people watching were amazing, and while walking the 20 or so blocks through the tree-lined streets to get to Forsythe Park, I stumbled upon the Colonial Cemetery. This cemetery has graves in it that are older than our country, since most of them date back to Colonial times. It has this weird feel about it made only more eerie by the dead grass and trees that are heavily draped in Spanish moss, almost like they are paying homage to the dead. I guess it’s this old, creepy history that earns Savannah the self-proclaimed title of Most Haunted City in America. There are all sorts of old pubs, restaurants, and theaters that claim to be haunted by Revolutionary war veterans, their disgruntled widows, and the tormented souls of slaves. They even offer nightly walking tours and pub-crawls where you can experience the haunts of ghouls throughout the city. The juxtaposition of Colonial cemeteries and buildings built over 200 years ago with the modern City Market inhabited by trendy art school students (Savannah College of Art and Design is situated in the heart of downtown) makes it feel like a colonial version of Greenwich Village, but in a cuter, more appealing, more Southern way.

Graves in the Colonial Cemetery.

After a long day of wine-tasting at a local vineyard’s storefront in City Market, haggling with the street peddlers for my very own palmetto leaf artfully shaped into a rose, checking out the Tall Ship museum, where miniature replicas of famous ships are displayed along with each of their quirky stories, I decided it was time for a beer. As I looked out over the river and watched the sunset, I ordered my new favorite beer, Sweetwater 420, at the rooftop bar of the Bohemian Hotel. When the waitress came over and noted my not-so-southern accent, she said, “Where y’all from?” to which my instant response of New York drew a surprised look. “Neeww Yorrk Citay?” she said in a very Pace-Picante commercial sort of way. “Well y’all enjoy your time in Savannah, ya hear?”

I certainly had enjoyed Savannah, however I couldn’t stay in my storybook  (read: cliché) southern city forever. Florida was calling my name! And as I pulled back onto I-95 headed to the land of snow-birds and palm trees, I was abruptly cut off by a black BMW with New York license plates.

Of course.

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Southern Comfort is part of our Summer Series.